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Kodiak Robotics introduces next generation autonomous truck

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Kodiak Robotics introduces next generation autonomous truck. Image: Kodiak Robotics, Inc.
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Kodiak Robotics, Inc., a leading self-driving trucking company, announced its fourth-generation autonomous truck. This new truck will feature Luminar’s Iris LiDAR, ZF Full Range Radar, Hesai 360-degree scanning LiDARs for side- and rear-view detection, Cummins X15TM Series engines, Bridgestone Americas smart-sensing tire technology, and the NVIDIA DRIVE platform. The fourth-generation trucks will debut on-road starting in Q4 of 2021, as Kodiak begins to take delivery of 15 new tractors.

Kodiak’s fourth-generation truck features a modular and discreet sensor suite in just three locations: a slim profile “center pod” on the front roofline of the truck, and pods integrated into both of the side mirrors. This well-integrated and low profile sensor placement vastly simplifies sensor installation and maintenance, and increases safety. The new generation of Kodiak self-driving trucks will improve the robustness of the autonomous system. It was designed with greater fleet uptime, manufacturing, and serviceability in mind–all of which are critical to scale quickly, safely and efficiently.

“Complex and bulky systems that require an engineer to hand-build and hand-tune are expensive, unreliable, and difficult to debug,” said Don Burnette, Co-founder and CEO of Kodiak Robotics. “We believe that reliability and scalability flow from simplicity, and the best hardware modifications should be barely visible. Our fourth-generation platform is designed for simple, scaled production which means easy calibration, troubleshooting and maintenance for our partners.”

Industry-leading perception system

Kodiak’s perception system, Kodiak Vision, takes the unique approach of considering every sensor–including LiDAR, camera and radar–primary. Kodiak Vision fuses together the information from the sensors and considers the relative strengths and weaknesses of each type. This incorporates extra redundancies and cross-validates data, adding another layer of safety to the self-driving system.

Kodiak’s fourth-generation truck further improves Kodiak Vision’s performance and reliability by incorporating the ZF Full Range Radar and Luminar’s long-range Iris LiDAR. These sensor integrations, combined with Kodiak’s previously-announced integration with Hesai 360-degree scanning LiDARs, for side- and rear-view detection, provide the necessary automotive-grade reliability needed for long-haul trucks. All three sensors are purpose-built to meet the needs of autonomous trucks, which need to “see” long-range in a wide variety of weather conditions to safely operate at highway speeds.

The ZF Full Range Radar provides revolutionary four-dimensional capabilities, measuring the distance, height, lateral angle, and velocity of an object out to 300+ meters. This contrasts with traditional radar, which cannot measure the vertical position of an object, effectively viewing the world from the top and down like a map. 4D radar is critical for autonomous trucks because it allows the system to distinguish overhead objects–such as road signs and bridges–from road hazards like stopped vehicles under a bridge or an overhead sign.

Luminar’s new automotive-grade Iris LiDAR’s wide horizontal and vertical field of view enables Kodiak trucks to recognize objects both near and far, adding further redundancy for long-range detections up to 600 meters. The high resolution and range allows the system to reliably “see” objects such as pedestrians and motorcycles. The LiDAR’s slim design has a profile of just 10 centimeters, so it seamlessly integrates into Kodiak Robotics’ discreet center roof pod in the front of the truck.

Kodiak Robotics’ patent-pending mirror pods–which will start with one Hesai LiDAR, two long-range 4D radars, and three cameras–don’t require specialized sensor calibration for easy upfit and repair. Rather than replacing a sensor in need of maintenance, a mechanic can simply replace the mirror pod in a matter of minutes. This single point of integration will allow maintenance and serviceability at scale.

Bringing Hardware & Software Together for Next-Gen Autonomous Trucks

Kodiak has placed an order for an additional 15 PACCAR trucks that will be delivered over the next year. The trucks will more than double the company’s fleet size and help Kodiak expand its growing business delivering freight for commercial customers in Texas and beyond. Over the next couple years, the company plans to expand throughout the southern half of the United States into other freight-rich corridors.

Under the hood, Kodiak’s fourth-generation trucks will be powered by Cummins X15TMSeries engines. These engines feature the Cummins ADS Powertrain interface, an industry-leading control interface allowing the autonomous system to safely, reliably and securely communicate with the engine. In addition, the 2021 X15TM engines meet EPA and Greenhouse Gas Phase 2 requirements, providing a fuel economy improvement over previous generation engines and further enhancing the environmental benefits of Kodiak autonomous trucks.

Kodiak trucks run exclusively on Bridgestone tires, and will be equipped with Bridgestone cloud-connected sensors that capture critical tire-centric data. That data will be analyzed and processed into live actionable insights, increasing uptime, improving overall safety, and enhancing the operational efficiency of Kodiak’s automated systems.

Kodiak’s fourth-generation truck will feature NVIDIA DRIVE Orin as the supercomputing platform, once available. With more than 250 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of compute performance, DRIVE Orin is architected for safety and addresses systematic safety standards such as ISO 26262 ASIL-D. In the interim, Kodiak will use the current generation NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Pegasus to process the data from the cameras, allowing the autonomous system to perceive the surrounding environment.

NVIDIA DRIVE provides the Kodiak Driver with the data and computing power it needs to reliably make and implement decisions–safely and securely.

To deploy commercially, a self-driving vehicle platform must achieve:

Performance: the vehicle’s sensors must provide high-resolution measurements to the software stack, the vehicle’s on-board compute must be able to process sensor measurements, and the vehicle’s controls must be able to smoothly actuate the vehicle, at all times

Stability: the vehicle must be able to continue operating, despite the inevitable bumps in the road

Reliability: the vehicle must be able to drive for tens of thousands of miles without breakdown

Scalability: the vehicle platform must be scalable, from a handful of prototypes to thousands

Safety: the vehicle must demonstrate its ability to navigate roadways with verifiable intention and integrity

Kodiak Robotics has shown significant momentum in 2021. Earlier this year, the company announced a contract with the United States Air Force to develop autonomous airbase vehicles. Additionally, Kodiak recently announced investments from BMW i Ventures and Bridgestone Americas as well as a collaboration with Bridgestone regarding smart tire sensing technologies. Kodiak aims to build the world’s most efficient, reliable and respected end-to-end delivery solution and has already begun driverless testing of its autonomous system.

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Logistics & Supply Chain

Ryder establishes Baton, a Ryder Technology Lab, based in Silicon Valley

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Ryder establishes Baton, a Ryder Technology Lab, based in Silicon Valley. Image: Ryder
Ryder establishes Baton, a Ryder Technology Lab, based in Silicon Valley. Image: Ryder
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Ryder System, Inc., a leader in supply chain, dedicated transportation, and fleet management solutions, announces the establishment of Baton, A Ryder Technology Lab, based in Silicon Valley. Baton’s mission is to pioneer a suite of groundbreaking customer-facing technologies designed to revolutionize how Ryder’s customers interact with their transportation and supply chain networks. These technologies will digitize and optimize networks at a level not currently available in the industry and will prepare Ryder for the coming artificial intelligence wave.

“The establishment of a Silicon Valley-based technology lab is a natural evolution for Ryder, as we build on the $1.3 billion in strategic investments we’ve made over the past five years to develop, acquire, and invest in innovative technologies, products, and services that help make our customers’ logistics networks more efficient and resilient,” says Karen Jones, CMO and head of new product development for Ryder. “To build on that success, it’s paramount we continue to invest in recruiting the brightest technology minds out there and provide them with a startup environment where they have the space and freedom to create, along with the resources of a $12 billion company.”

Leading Ryder’s innovation lab are Andrew Berberick and Nate Robert, co-chief product and technology officers for Ryder. The two founded San Francisco-based startup Baton, which was known for the development of a proprietary logistics technology focused on optimizing transportation networks. Ryder initially invested in Baton’s Series A funding round and then acquired the startup last year.

“What piqued our interest in Ryder then, and what keeps us excited today, is the fact that it’s the only fully integrated port-to-door logistics provider in North America managing the complex supply chains of many of the world’s biggest and best-known brands. That gives Ryder tremendous perspective and reach, and as engineers, it provides us with the unique opportunity to tackle some of the largest and most daunting problems in the industry today, while preparing Ryder and its customers for the coming AI wave,” says Berberick.

Baton’s first challenge is to create a first-of-its-kind, AI-powered digital platform and optimization engine that facilitates a new, integrated approach to managing transportation networks for customers where seasonality and fluctuating demand inhibit the continuous use of resources.

“There is a massive amount of waste when supply chains do not communicate. We believe we can change that and bring deep transformation to an entire sector,” says Robert. “That’s why we’re now actively recruiting talented technologists from some of Silicon Valley’s most respected technology firms to help solve some of the most complex problems plaguing the nearly $2.5 trillion North American transportation and logistics industry. We’re looking for engineers excited by the challenge and who want the autonomy and nimbleness of a startup environment but with the power, reach, and stability of a highly respected industry titan.”

Berberick holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford University and worked for Google, Accenture, and Mindtribe; Robert holds a bachelor’s degree from MIT and master’s degree from Stanford University and worked for BuildZoom and Bain & Company, prior to cofounding Baton. Other key members of the Baton technology lab bring experience from Apple, Meta, OpenAI, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Tesla, Loadsmart, Kinema Systems (acquired by Boston Dynamics), PlayStation, Zynga, and LinkedIn.

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Logistics & Supply Chain

Rail freight on track for record volumes at APM Terminals

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Rail freight on track for record volumes at APM Terminals. Image: APM Terminals
Rail freight on track for record volumes at APM Terminals. Image: APM Terminals
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Rail is acknowledged as the most fuel-efficient way to move freight over land, with a gallon of fuel stretching an average of 500 miles, according to the Association of American Railroads. In July this year the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) endorsed the push for freight railroads, stating that the transport mode can play a key role in the solution to climate change.

That assessment is something that APM Terminals has been fully on board with for some time. We’re committed to raising the standards of responsibility by offering low or zero carbon solutions for customers and consumers through our decarbonisation efforts and increasing rail transport options.

Record loads in India

Take for example APM Terminals Pipavav, which has taken nearly 50,000 containers off the road to substantially reduce traffic congestion and pollution. Just last month the port handled 206 trains – the highest number this year so far, pulling significantly ahead of its previous loading record of 157 double stack trains in a month in 2020.

Carbon-conscious in the US

Pipavav is not an exception. A few months ago, our operations in Mobile Alabama announced a bumper $60 million rail expansion in response to demand from increasingly carbon-conscious customers.

According to EPA data, freight railroads account for just 0.5% of total US emissions and only 1.7% of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Added to this, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) states: “Moving freight by rail instead of truck lowers GHG emissions by up to 75%, on average”.

Sustainability with speed

The benefits of rail extend even beyond important net zero targets, as APM Terminals Americas Head, Leo Huisman acknowledges: “Our customers are looking for expanded options for their supply chains so we are focusing on faster connections to rail providers into inland markets.” The APM Terminals Mobile rail facility will therefore enable faster rail loading and departures.

Eyes trained on the future

Customer demand for sustainable and fast transport in the US and India is mirrored in Europe, where our colleague Homam Mansour is keeping his sights on the future of intermodal transport in his role as Rail Planner in our Gothenburg terminal, Sweden. Under his watch, Gothenburg has set an ambition to never refuse extra trains. Says Mansour: “We kept this promise throughout 2022, receiving and handling 84 extra trains requested by our customers at short notice”.

The commitment to rail has seen the volume of containers transported by rail via APM Terminals Gothenburg increase by 13% this year compared to 2021. More than 55% of all goods now reach the port by rail.

At APM Terminals globally, we train our sights on customer-focused, environment-friendly, and speedy supply chain solutions, and those priorities will continue to gain momentum.

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Environment

Hapag-Lloyd partners with DB Schenker to decarbonise supply chains

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Hapag-Lloyd partners with DB Schenker to decarbonise supply chains. Image: Hapag-Lloyd
Hapag-Lloyd partners with DB Schenker to decarbonise supply chains. Image: Hapag-Lloyd
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Hapag-Lloyd has entered into a partnership with DB Schenker for the purpose of decarbonising supply chains. Following the launch of “Ship Green” in May, the renowned logistics provider has selected Hapag-Lloyd’s sustainable transport solution as part of its sustainability initiatives.

DB Schenker and Hapag-Lloyd have signed an agreement for emission-reduced container transports with a waste- and residue-based biofuel. By end of 2023, DB Schenker plans to claim approximately 3,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions avoidance. This is based on at least 1,000 tonnes of pure biofuel.

“We are excited about this new partnership with DB Schenker as we share the common goal of making logistics more sustainable. Collaborations like these set a clear signal in the industry and are another example of a step-by-step approach to further decarbonise supply chains”, said Henrik Schilling, Managing Director Global Commercial Development at Hapag-Lloyd.

“I am very pleased that together with Hapag-Lloyd we are setting another example for sustainability in our industry. This partnership further enlarges our global biofuel offer in ocean freight. With this commitment we are one step closer to our goal of becoming carbon-neutral”, said Thorsten Meincke, Global Board Member for Air & Ocean Freight at DB Schenker.

Hapag-Lloyd has launched the Ship Green product to offer its customers emission-reduced ocean transports. Based on biofuel, customers of Hapag-Lloyd can add Ship Green as an additional service to their existing bookings – thereby avoiding CO2e emissions. Using the so-called “Book & Claim” chain of custody, Hapag-Lloyd can attribute avoided emissions to all ocean-leg transports, regardless of the vessel and route used. Ship Green is available for all shipments containing standard, hardtop or tank equipment. By offering Ship Green, Hapag-Lloyd is continuing along its path towards achieving climate-neutral fleet operations by 2045.

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